AwardWallet receives compensation from advertising partners for links on the blog. The opinions expressed here are our own and have not been reviewed, provided, or approved by any bank advertiser. Here's our complete list of Advertisers.

During its recent rebranding exercise, Marriott updated its policy for transferring points between Marriott Bonvoy accounts. The previous policy allowed members to transfer up to 50,000 points per year, with an exception for one-time transfers that were to be used immediately for a redemption. The updated Marriott transfer policy is now hard-coded into the system and allows you to transfer up to 100,000 points per year to another Bonvoy member, and Marriott has done away with the one-time transfers.

The Fastest Way Of Increasing Your Marriott Bonvoy Account Balance

Marriott makes it simple to earn a substantial number of rewards points through stays and points promotions. If you find a fantastic deal that you have to book, but don't have enough points to make it work, there are a couple of ways to fast track your points earning efforts significantly, the first of which is to apply for one of the Marriott co-brand credit cards.

Possibly the fastest way to increase your points balance, however, is to transfer points from another account, typically from a friend or family member. A common side effect of collecting points and miles is that it rarely happens alone. When you announce to family and friends you have booked a seven-night stay in a 5-star hotel, flying first class, and it cost you little out of pocket, most of us wind up educating our families and sometimes our entire social circles on collecting points and miles.

Note: You are not required to have all the points in your account at the time of booking the award stay. You can book the award using an e-certificate giving you time to transfer points (which can take a few days to make it into your account).

Transferring Marriott Bonvoy Points To Another Account

Marriott will let you transfer up to 100,000 points per year to any Marriott account you choose, provided that account is in good standing and has been open a minimum of 60 days.

“…a Member can transfer up to a maximum of 100,000 Points per calendar year to another Membership Account as long as both Accounts are in good standing and have each been open for at least sixty (60) days. A Member can receive up to a maximum of 500,000 Points per calendar year from other Membership Accounts as long as the Accounts are in good standing and have each been open for at least sixty (60 days).“

If your account has been open less than 60 days, you can still initiate or receive a transfer if the account is at least 30 days old and you have rewards activity in your account such as a qualifying stay or other points earning activity.

Prior to the SPG merger, Marriott members could also initiate a one-time transfer that exceeded the annual transfer limit, provided the points were redeemed immediately for a free night award. AwardWallet has confirmed with Marriott Rewards that this is no longer the case, and the 100,000 point limit on transfers is a hard cap. You can receive transfers from multiple accounts, up to 500,000 points per year, but you can no longer exceed the 100,000 point transfer limit when sending points from your account to other members.

To initiate a transfer, call Marriott Rewards Guest Services on 1-801-468-4000 (it pays to have both sets of account information handy).

Do Points Transfers Extend the Expiry Date of Marriott Points?

At the beginning of 2016, Marriott updated the points expiration policy to exclude transfers as a qualifying activity, meaning members that don't have any qualifying activity for 24 months will forfeit all accumulated points in their account. It is important to note two of the events here that do not count towards maintaining active account status.

Final Thoughts

Marriott's points transfer policy has been well thought out to avoid members abusing the transfer rules. The 100,000 limit for transfers from an account is enough for lower category redemptions and topping off accounts that are just a few thousand short of a travel goal. And the 500,000 limit on receiving points enables families with points spread across multiple accounts to consolidate their points into a single account to redeem for an extended stay, or, to take advantage of one family members' elite status.

Did you know that AwardWallet provides an award booking service through its partners? If you'd like the team to help book an award ticket using your points and miles, just submit a booking request. Show me how

Comments

I am a Platinum and used my points on 2 recent trips. I am to receive 1/2 of the points from 2 other Marriott members…we used mine as I have Platinum and thought I had better upgrade power. If I use the points under their name/number can I still travel as a Platinum or will I only receive coverage for their status…one is Silver and one is Gold. Thank you.

I have been on hold for almost an hour and a half trying to transfer 7,000 points from my account to my son in law who is trying to plan a surprise trip for his wife. Can someone help me?? I have his account number and mine. can I do this through e-mail??

Just went through a similar experience. Should be easily accomplished on the website but instead, you have to call and waste far too much time sitting on hold. Love Marriot and the rewards program but I pray they update their online capabilities for the convenience of the customer

Is the transfer done for a booking ( after the limit transfer per user has been reached ) still allowed under the new terms ? I called twice today and agents were unsure, and i also checked the T&C and couldn’t find any references to it, unfortunately.

I’m Plat Premium Elite. I’ve had two different PPE operators tell me they can’t transfer more than 50k points from my wife’s account to redeem a 240k award I have on hold – which took forever to clear. One operator hung up when I pusher to recheck. Second one I asked for supervisor transfer and ended up in hold loop – gave up after 10 mins. Really frustrating.

All agents assume that the limit is 50k, which was the case pre-merge. Now, if you check the T&C, it states a limit of 100k. And most importantly, the system allows it. I know because in September i transferred exactly 100k from one account to another. When we tried more, the system denied it, but under 100k it went through fine.

I’m trying to transfer 100,000 points to my son as part of his wedding gift. The first Marriott Rewards agent I spoke to told me I could only transfer 50,000 points, so I provided my son’s account number and she quickly made the transfer. After I hung up I did some research and learned that the limit had been increased to 100,000. Thus I called back and got a different Marriott Rewards agent, Anita – – a huffy bureaucrat. She told me I could not transfer points to my son without him being present with me to authorize Marriott accessing his account! I told her I had just transferred 50,000 10 minutes earlier. She said the other agent obviously didn’t know Marriott policies. Gotta love the Marriott Team!! I plan to call again and see if there is a real “customer service “ representative. I am a Platinum Elite member.

Yes, limit is 100k per year. It used to be 50k, and most agents dont seem to know the new rules.

It happened to me as well, some agents transferred by me just giving the member ID, which i think shouldnt be possible.. whereas other agent asked for the person whom i was transferring from to speak on the phone.

And I do agree, since the merge, must agent dont know what they are talking about.

We just cashed out and abandoned Marriott. It’s too difficult to try and maintain both Marriott and Hilton and at the end of the day Hilton has more value in their credit card to us. It wasn’t great value but 66,000 Marriott points gave us well over 20,000 United miles plus a bonus. No regrets here.

Too bad there is a fee (even if only 10$) but its good to know there is the option to transfer points – I didn’t realize there was. This will allow me to transfer points and then stay with status instead of my none status.

I read the article and received a notice that I “commented too fast”. I’m not sure what that means, but it seems like you are trying to prevent people from leaving comments without reading the article, which I understand. However, if that is the case, it is clear you have your time filter set too short. What about people who are only interested in part of the article and read based on the section heading only what they are interested in?

I think this would be a good way to get some airline miles for another users account. Transfer the Marriott points to them, then they can transfer those points to an airline. Or is that prohibited in the terms and conditions? The caveat being that it could take weeks for the points to be transferred to miles by Marriott.

The detail and recap here is very much appreciated. Which one of the rewards plus hotel and air packages do you consider to be best value? I’m making the assumption that the Rewards Plus with United is better value than any of the other airlines

Lots of guidance in the article itself, including this key sentence: “To initiate a transfer, call Marriott Rewards Guest Services on 1-801-468-4000 (it pays to have both sets of account information handy).”

I don’t necessarily like this policy. I thought the legacy SPG policy was better where you could share unlimited points between you and your partner (provided you share the same address). I think Marriott should allow greater than 100K transfers for folks living at the same address.

We have a Marriott stay in the near future and I wanted to prepay so that we could apply that toward the spend on an SPG American Express card. I’ve had to contact different people and jump through various hoops able to make that happen. At the moment, it seems that I have to fill out a form authorizing the credit card to be charged prior to arrival and I can prepay. One person told me that it would be through a third-party and yet another agent told me it would be direct to Marriott. Crazy confusion. Why does this have to be so difficult?

With SPG you could transfer any amount of points that you desired with no limit, from ONE member to another (who shared the same home address). 5,000,000 points if you wanted. Also, the transfer used to be done online, and there was no charge.

100K a year is nothing, even 500K is too low and you would need 5 members to transfer the points.

I am about to try and consolidate some of the points earned from other members of the family, and I wondered if anyone had any luck circumventing the 100k limit via uncombined accounts (ie anyone who has their previous SPG and Marriott linked but not combined).

It would work something like this:
A (former SPG) 100k > B (former SPG)
A (Marriott) 100k > B (Marriott)

then have B either do an internal transfer between the linked accounts or combine them to access the full 200k.

I’m pretty certain it would work with unlinked accounts, but didn’t know if Bonvoy’s IT would flag the linked nature and create a hard cap of 100k in total for the two accounts.

Advertiser Disclosure: The credit card offers that appear on AwardWallet are from credit card companies from which we receive compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on AwardWallet (including, for example, the order in which they appear). AwardWallet does not include all credit card companies or all available credit card offers. Editorial Disclosure: The editorial content on this page is not provided by any bank, credit card issuer, airlines or hotel chain, and has not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of these entities. Opinions expressed here are author's alone, not those of the bank, credit card issuer, airlines or hotel chain, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any of these entities.